My friend just got her hair cut like Triana, so I pulled together a Dean costume sort of as a joke, more to convince her that we should totally do it sometime. Anyways, here it is:http://www.cosplay.com/costume/365091/
I need a belt, but I like it, considering that it's made entirely of things I just had laying around my house.

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-Jen

"I don't have to﻿ conform to the vagaries of time and space...I'm a LOONY for God's sake!"

Hey, I'm planning on doing a Dr. Mrs. The Monarch costume and I was wondering if anyone here had found a place carrying yellow 4-way stretch vinyl? I know there's a lot of 2-way out there, but it would just be so much easier with 4-way and the only kind I can find is more of a green yellow from Spandex House. Anyone else who did Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, what did you guys use?

I totally pulled some thread neglect. I'm not into cosplay, per se, as a hobby. I just really get into Halloween and replicas. Anyway, figured I'd share some Monarch pics in case anyone needed ideas.

The Crown - Took a 2 liter soda bottle and cut out a crown shape, with the points and all. Then, took 2 pieces of that yellow vinyl, traced the outline of the cut bottle on them, cut them out, and stitched them together to make a pocket to slide the cut plastic bottle into, stitched the bottom to seal it up and tied some yellow thread around the top of the points to make little balls for effect.

The Breastplate - I grabbed a relatively durable, plastic Roman gladiator's chest plate from a costume shop. There were much better ones online for the purpose of the costume, but due to time restraints, I had to get one locally. It was sturdy enough that it wouldn't rip or crack, it had a front and a back. It looked something like this. Here is the one I used.

I took an Exacto knife and cut off some of the most protruding details, mainly the nipples, and the Medusa face in the middle, so they wouldnt show through the eventual covering of thin, very contour friendly, yellow vinyl. I didn't want to cut too much off and compromise the strength of the plastic, so just the real 'sticking out' parts.

Then, I covered it in a pretty thick, white naugahyde. This helped smooth the features a lot and make it almost uniform. The thick white material basically bridged the gaps between the chest plate's natural shapes and contours. It also acted as a 'primer' so the thin yellow vinyl would have even coloring behind it and nothing unwanted showing through. I basically wrapped the naugahyde around and used a lot of duct tape to tape it 3-4 inches into the inside of the chest piece.

Then, took the thin yellow vinyl, pulled tightly around the whole breastplate, from the center out, taping it again on the inside. I repeated this entire process for the backing piece.

The Emblem - I took some white contact paper and spray painted it red. Then printed out the monarch logo, all blown up and big on some regular paper. Laid the print out over the dry, now red contact paper and cut it out with a sharp Exacto knife. Then stuck it to the chest piece.

The Shoulder Pads - Are actually knee pads I got from the hardware store (Lowe's). recovered them with the yellow vinyl and then used heavy, large metal snaps to hold them on to the chest piece. Here are the one's we used.

The Wings - Were the hardest part. I wanted to do them real heavy duty, so they had some weight to them and didn't appear flimsy and fake. So we made them out of orange seat vinyl and black naugahyde/leather. With all the finished sewn edges, they got really, really thick in some places (basically like 8-10 layers of thick vinyl) and kept breaking the needle in the machine, even at slow speeds and the heaviest leather needle we could get. We, and by we I mean she (God bless her), hand cranked the machine for the entire job and you can see the detail of the sewing and thickness here:

We first drew the wings out in full scale on cardboard and used that as a stencil to cut out the real pieces. We attached the wings with heavy duty snaps to the backside of the torso armor. Snaps were, 1 in the middle, 1 under each shoulder pad.

The Boots - Were old sneakers with cardboard, like a gift box you'd put a shirt into, shaped and cut to stand up like the kingly boots the monarch wears. With enough cardboard and duct tape making the layout, we covered it with the yellow vinyl in straps or rows. It gave it a really nice, details contour look, rather than entirely smooth and cartoonish; a little more realistic.

The Wrist Gauntlets - Were really simple; yellow vinyl, stuffed with cotton batting. We used holes, with eyelets, and a shoe lace to hold them on; basically like a sneaker. We had lines sewn in to give it that looks the Monarch's gauntlets have, but it didn't show well from a distance as we used yellow stitching (I'd use black next time).

All in all, it was a big hit, we had a lot of fun making it from scratch. At the time, I couldn't find but maybe 2 pictures of Monarch costumes online, so I think that helped us really try and figure out the best way to make it all work. Was definitely my favorite costume build to date.

I have tons of pictures of the process, almost every big step, posted below if anyone is curious. I'm always checking these and other Cosplay forums and sites as resources for ideas and inspiration, I don't want to leech without giving back so hopefully this helps some Cosplayers in their ventures towards Monarchy!

Thanks much man, really appreciated. I really want to go to DragonCon and see all the other costumes and give all of mine another day in the sun. I'm not sure I'd pull any contest wins, some people have incredible stuff lol but it'd be fun to romp around either way.